


fever dream

by shier



Series: art thieves [1]
Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 08:03:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12272277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shier/pseuds/shier
Summary: after a job, jiwon and junhoe take some time off in an unexpected way.





	fever dream

The street’s quiet by the time they arrive, silence bolstered by the season of muggy, hot air. He should’ve opted for the tee instead of the too-formal button up he has on, but they didn’t have time in the airport to stop for a change. And besides, he doesn’t think he’s seeing straight—something foggy brews in his head, forcing him to stick a hand out to grab Junhoe by the arm as they turn down alleyways in search for their motel.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Junhoe asks, stopping so abruptly that Jiwon slams up against his side. Junhoe squints, dark eyebrows drawing together like wings. It looks as though his face might fly away. Jiwon giggles but the look of worry only intensifies. “God, are you _really_ sick?”  
  
“A little bit,” Jiwon concedes, after days of insisting that he’s _perfectly fine_. It’s unprofessional to bail out in the closing stages of a job. Worse yet, it’s challenging to concede that Junhoe’d been right about Jiwon staying out in the rain.  
  
“No one’s a _little_ _bit_ sick,” Junhoe points out, that tinge of annoyance already rounding his voice. Jiwon wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to be upset—Jiwon’d held out for this long, hadn’t he? But he figures it’s wiser to let Junhoe go on his little self-righteous tirade. “You’re sick or you’re _not_ sick. Seriously, are you _five_? Do I have to look out for you every time you do something _stupid_?” Junhoe disengages his hand, only to wrap an around around Jiwon. He’s warm and heavy on his shoulders and the weight of it blurs the line of consciousness for Jiwon, only because he knows there’ll be someone to drag him back out.  
  
He blinks and the next thing he knows, he’s seated on the edge of a bed wearing nothing but his singlet. The room’s still warm—his skin feels feverishly hot—and when he falls back to press himself against the cool sheets, he sees Junhoe walk in from the bathroom with nothing but a bath towel over his head. And then all at once, he’s in Hong Kong, in Taipei, in Abu Dhabi, and it’s always the same. _Always_ , he thinks blearily, pushing a hand against his bangs as if that might clear his mind. There’s something he wants to tell Junhoe, something achingly _necessary_ , and it swells at the base of his throat... or maybe it’s just a bad flu coming on.  
  
“Come here,” he tells Junhoe, and then rolls over to the side—to cooler sheets and beyond—and pats the recently vacated space.  
  
Junhoe snorts, but he does drop the towel on the ground and slides in next to Jiwon. He smells like hotel soap, and his hair’s a fuzzy wild mess, so _of course_ Jiwon has to shove his face in it. It’s surprisingly cool, even when the kiss that Junhoe presses to his neck is searingly hot. 

“I can’t believe you’re sick,” Junhoe complains again, but then he has an arm slung around Jiwon’s waist, and Jiwon lets himself fall into the heat he’s radiating. “Kim Jiwon I swear to _god_ –“

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

He wakes up to an empty bed, sweating uncomfortably under layers of thin cotton. He shifts and finds sweet, sweet relief, as if the temperature in the room’s dropped considerably in a split second. And then he blinks, trying to remember where the hell he’s ended up. There’s something fundamentally _wrong_ with the situation. If only he could put his finger on... _Junhoe_. Right.  
  
It takes him more effort than he likes to kick off the sheets from the bed, having seemingly been glued to it by sheer perspiration alone. But even when he paces the room—checks the nooks and crannies and the small cupboard that serves entirely no purpose except to exist—Jiwon can’t find him.

Worry starts gnawing in his gut, although logically he knows that Junhoe’s always just around the corner. _I have a sixth sense that lets me know you’ve fucked up,_ Junhoe once told him as they were speeding away from when Jiwon had, predictably, fucked up. He still thinks about that conversation, sometimes, even though back then they hadn’t meant _anything_ to each other, other than a latent possibility of meaning something to each other.  
  
He’s on the hunt for his phone when the lock _snicks_ and Junhoe strides through the open door, dressed in a dark hoodie and Jiwon’s cargo pants carrying a red plastic bag, stuffed full like santa’s sack.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Junhoe demands, making a face at how Jiwon’s currently surrounded by a small explosion of clothes.  
  
“Trying to find my cell.” He fishes out a t-shirt of dubious ownership, but it’s cellphone free and therefore useless. “Have you seen it?”  
  
“We chucked it out in Jeju, remember?” Junhoe asks, his eyebrows furrowing. Then he’s a step closer, and another, and another, until he’s a caricature leaning into Jiwon’s personal space, eyes wide and concerned. “How fucked up are you right now?”  
  
_Very fucked up,_ Jiwon wants to say, gaze darting down to Junhoe’s lips, and then back up again. “I’m _fine_ ,” he says aloud. “It’s just–“  
  
“–a fever,” Junhoe chimes in, hand plastered to Jiwon’s face. “I can’t–“  
  
“–believe it, yeah. You said that yesterday.”  
  
“And you’re naked... _why_?” He has an eyebrow arched, now, his lips pressed together in displeasure, and all Jiwon wants to do is laugh. _Cute_ , he thinks, and can’t remember why he ever thought Junhoe was intimidating or mature or in any way _older_ than him.  
  
“It’s hot,” Jiwon explains. He can hear the petulance jut out of his tone unwarranted, but he has no room to feel embarrassed. “The air-conditioning’s broken.”  
  
“ _You’re_ broken,” Junhoe shoots back. He rummages around in his bag and produces a bottle of iced water, the plastic surface translucent and beaded with condensation. Without thinking, Jiwon tugs Junhoe’s wrist towards him, pressing the cold surface to his cheek and sighs.  
  
Afterwards, they draw a compromise: Jiwon eats his pills and puts on a shirt and will undertake the behemoth exercise of restraint of _not_ kissing Junhoe. In return, Junhoe will let Jiwon shower and then sleep on him. It’s strange trying to catch sleep in the middle of the day, with the sunlight filtering in weakly through the curtains yellowing curtains. But Junhoe stays still under him, fingers drifting down the plane of Jiwon’s back the way Junhoe knows he likes. And then he’s gone.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

The next time he wakes up, Junhoe still asleep and the room is dark again. He stretches languidly, earning himself a murmur of dissent as Junhoe turns away and sprawls across half the bed, effectively kicking Jiwon out of it. His limbs ache in a way that tells him that he needs to eat and then sleep some more, but all he really wants to do is press up against Junhoe’s back and let the world stay quiet a little longer.

But he’s sticky enough that he can’t stay curled up any longer, so he forces himself out of bed and plops down on the chair next to the window, peeking out of the curtains. The buildings opposite their room are short and fat, red bricks crumbling in enough places that it’s better described as derelict than quaint. He realizes he’s been here before, though he can’t quite remember when. Their lives have become a string of adventure with no start and no end, unspooling one wilful tug at a time, and Jiwon finds that it doesn’t bother him quite as much any more.  
  
Jiwon picks up the stub of a pencil and the notepad sitting on the coffee table and starts to draw because it feels like. Now that he’s here for the second time, he _should_ remember this place. The granite scratches against the paper in a way that isn’t entirely unpleasant. It wouldn’t be his pencil of choice, but it has its own character, and before long, he’s filled the page with scribbles: the building with its blazing neon sign, the wilting potted plants lining the side-walk, the man smoking by his car, a row of windows, and by the time he turns his gaze back to the room, he finds Junhoe watching him quietly, mouth hanging just slightly open.  
  
If Jiwon were the kind of guy to keep sketchbooks—and he used to be, until he discovered that lugging around something like that was inconvenient as hell—he imagines he’d have entire volumes dedicated to Junhoe. Pages and pages and pages of his face. Jiwon could study the shadows dancing across his skin and never get bored. So he shifts in his chair and starts sketching out the curve of Junhoe’s throat. And every time he looks up, Junhoe’s still watching him, as if Junhoe’s the one drawing him.

 

 

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

They head out too late for dinner and end up settling for supper.  
  
“We’ve been here before,” Jiwon argues, around a mouthful of potstickers. Junhoe makes a face, his eyes rolling as if to suggest that he’s never heard anything dumber than what Jiwon’d just said. “We _have_. Remember? You stole a teapot.”  
  
They both glance at the ceramic pot full of Oolong tea between them, and Jiwon can pinpoint the exact moment the puzzle pieces slide into place for Junhoe, but _still_ he insists, “You’re delirious. It’s okay, I won’t hold your fever dream against you as long as you admit you’re wrong.”

Jiwon licks the tip of his chopstick and drags it across Junhoe’s cheek, earning him a shriek and an enraged _Jiwon you fucking bastard I’m going to leave you here and you can wash the godamn dishes for the rest of your miserable fucking life_ and he laughs, suddenly feeling a million times better.  
  
“Okay,” Jiwon says, tipping to one side to avoid any sudden attacks, “I was wrong. You’re _right_. Happy now?”  
  
“I’ll be happy when I put a bullet through your head,” Junhoe grumbles, but he doesn’t fight it when Jiwon pulls him closer with a foot hooked on the leg of his chair.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

His fever creeps higher and higher as the days pass. He blames it on the torrential rain they had to leg through on their way back, and that he’s probably genetically predisposed to fall ill because Junhoe’s _still_ breathing from two unclogged nostrils and lording it over him. After he hits an all-time high of 42 degrees, Junhoe slips out of the room to buy more medicine. This isn’t how he’d imagined his post-job jaunt to be. In his imagination, there was a lot more dick involved, and now he’ll count himself lucky if his doesn’t fall off.  
  
It doesn’t help that the day is hot. The slant of sunlight plastered to the carpet is scalding to walk on, and Jiwon’s taken the opportunity to strip down to his purple boxers, figuring that Junhoe wouldn’t yell at him too much when he’s on the brink of death. His hair’s sticking too much to his face, but he hasn’t had the time to remember that he wanted Junhoe to buy an elastic band of some sort for him.

Maybe he should have waited for that first, but he finds himself seated on the lid of the toilet bowl with a shaver in hand, and a streak of baldness right smack in the center of his head. At any rate, it’s too late to turn back now, so he keeps going, telling himself that he needs a new look anyway (although he would miss the way Junhoe grabs his hair, sometimes, but he’s not going to think about _that_ now).  
  
By the time Junhoe returns, he’s had time to crawl piteously back into bed and to enjoy his newfound ability to stay cool to remember what he’d done.  
  
“Wha–“ Junhoe starts, blinking owlishly, and then he laughs like he’s never seen anything as funny before.  
  
“It’s a new look,” Jiwon repeats, this time aloud, and not quite as assured as the voice in his head had been when he’d been trying to combat the heat. “Shit, it’s not _that_ bad.” Junhoe makes a serious of spluttering sounds, and that’s enough for Jiwon to clutch his head in doubt.  
  
“You look like—“ Junhoe shudders as if he’s trying to remember how to _breathe_ “—you look like—“ There’s a high probability that Junhoe’s _not_ going to finish that sentence, so Jiwon pulls a face (the one that makes him look like he’s been slammed into a brick wall) and that sends Junhoe into fresh peals of laughter. That makes two things the shaved head’s useful for.

 

 

 

/

 

 

 

“Stop _moving_ ,” Junhoe insists, his palm broad and warm against the nape of Jiwon’s neck.  
  
“You’re not doing it right!” Jiwon argues, though he stills and tips his head forward. He’s seen other people do this for Junhoe too, except they usually had their wrists bound and their knees to the ground, thighs splayed in a way that seemed almost indecent if not for the gun Junhoe had pointed to their heads. To this day, Jiwon still pretends as though he hadn’t seen.  
  
“You say that like there’s anything to fuck up.” The grip on Jiwon’s neck tightens painfully and Jiwon yelps, shoving his hands under his ass to sit on them. “You’re an egg dipped in _feathers_.”  
  
“I look hot,” Jiwon counter-argues, ignoring the thrill that goes down his spine when Junhoe drags the razor up the back of his head once, then twice, then stops to wash it free of soap and hair. He glances up at their reflection: Jiwon, with his face turned down as if in submission, and Junhoe, tall and capable, wearing a look of utter concentration as he moves to another patch of Jiwon’s head.

Laughter spills out of him then, wincing only slightly when Junhoe nicks his scalp from the sudden movement. Predictably, Junhoe makes a sound that echoes in the walls of the bathroom. But Jiwon spins around on the edge of the tub so they come face to face, and he leans forward to kiss Junhoe as the blood trickles down to his neck.

 

 

 


End file.
